The Sarawak state government has filed a petition at the Federal Court of Malaysia to challenge three long-standing federal laws: the Petroleum Development Act 1974, the Continental Shelf Act 1966 and the Petroleum Mining Act 1966.
Deputy minister in the Sarawak premier’s department, Sharifah Hasidah Sayeed Aman Ghazali, says these laws adversely affect Sarawak’s pre-Malaysia Day boundaries and deprive the state of its rights to petroleum resources located offshore within those boundaries.
“These federal Acts adversely affect and deprive the rights of Sarawak to the natural resources, including oil and gas, found in the seabed of the continental shelf within the boundaries as defined by the Sarawak Order in Council 1954 and the Sarawak Order in Council 1958.
“Sarawak is justified in safeguarding the legitimate interests and rights of Sarawak and its people, enshrined in the Federal Constitution as well as in the Malaysia Agreement 1963, by seeking a ruling from the Federal Court on the continuing application and effect of these federal Acts in Sarawak,” ” she said in a statement.
The state is also objecting to an application by Petronas, which on Jan 10 sought leave from the apex court for clarity on the regulatory framework governing its operations in Sarawak. The Federal Court has fixed March 16 to decide on that leave application.
Former Sabah chief minister Salleh Said Keruak has thrown in his 2 cents worth to say that Sarawak is not being confrontational. Rather, he frames the petition as an expression of confidence in the rule of law — an attempt to secure fairness while recognising Petronas’s importance as a national institution.
“Bringing this issue to court should not be seen as confrontational, but rather as an expression of confidence in the rule of law.
Petronas remains an important national institution, and its contribution to the economy is significant. At the same time, clarity on state rights will provide certainty for the future.
“Ultimately, the aim is fairness, ensuring that national resources are managed responsibly in a way that strengthens the federation and benefits the people,” " he said in a Facebook post .
Everyone speaks the language of fairness.
Every believes that they are right in some absolute and objective manner.
But the problem, in the affairs of the world, what is right,good and fair depends on who you think you are.
There is an old saying: to the grass, the lamb is the villain and the wolf is the hero.
In other words, What is just or unjust, good or evil, right or wrong, often depends on identity.
We like to imagine that justice is universal — that it exists independently of perspective. Yet we may think we are good people because we work hard to earn an honest living to afford the briyani we eat. To the goat that must die for that briyani however, we are oppressors.
Justice is never seen from nowhere. It is always seen from somewhere.
Sarawak says the three federal Acts deprive it of resources found in the seabed of the continental shelf within boundaries defined by the Sarawak Orders in Council of 1954 and 1958. It invokes constitutional safeguards and the spirit of the Malaysia Agreement 1963. It says it is justified in safeguarding the legitimate interests of its people.
From Sarawak’s vantage point, this is a matter of justice. It is matter of its intrinsic right and sovereignity.
Putrajaya, however, will inevitably view the matter through a different lens. The petroleum framework established in 1974 created Petronas as the national oil company, centralising ownership and control of petroleum resources for the federation as a whole. From this perspective, the issue is not deprivation but coherence — not injustice but constitutional structure.
So what must the Federal Court ultimately decide?
Beyond statutory interpretation, beyond jurisdictional technicalities, it must implicitly answer a deeper question about identity: about who is Sarawak, who is Putrajayan and what what is Sarawak in relation to Putrajaya?
If the court sees Sarawak and Putrajaya as meaningfully distinct constitutional entities — partners with separate reservoirs of sovereignty and a separate but intersectional identity — then it becomes possible to say one has treated the other unjustly.
But if the court sees them as components of a single, indivisible federation, then the language of injustice becomes harder to sustain. Afterall, we can only be unfair to “others”, but there is no such thing as oneself being unfair to oneself.
You can accuse your spouse of unfairness when they take most of your salary and spend what they find to be important , only if you see yourselves as separate individuals within a household.
But if you see yourselves as one unit, then it makes little sense to say they took your money. Instead, the right way to see it is as the unit taking money from the unit to spend it on the unit.
This is why disputes over oil and gas, regulatory frameworks and constitutional validity are never merely technical. They are identity disputes dressed in legal language.
And this is also why they have no natural ending.
The tension between Sarawak and the federation mirrors the tensions among races in Peninsular Malaysia. For decades, we have argued not just over policy but over who we are to one another.
Some say all citizens are equal and the same.
Others say certain communities possess special rights rooted in history.
In similar fashion, Putrajaya may view all regions as equal components of a federation. Sarawak and Sabah may see themselves as founding partners with distinctive status, entitled to special recognition and treatment.
Salleh speaks of fairness strengthening the federation. Sharifah Hasidah speaks of constitutional rights. Petronas seeks clarity.
But beneath the legal briefs and press statements lies a philosophical question: are we one or are we many? Are we the same or different, If we are one and the same, as how the arms and the head belong to the same body, the question of why the arm has to do most of the work while the head is getting most of the protection, will not arise. If we are many and different however, it will.
Until that question is settled in the national imagination — not merely in a court judgment — the argument will not end.
It will resurface under different names, in different sectors, through different disputes. Oil today. Revenue tomorrow. Regulatory power the day after.
And in Malaysia, judging by how this question is being played out amongst the races in the peninsular, this question will likely never be reconciled. They will just drag on and and on, raising tension and straining relationship, for as long as they drag on.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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